[JohnFen]

I think that people are, for the most part, seeing real phenomena of various sorts. The problem is that people tend to jump from "I don't know what that is" directly to "it's aliens", ignoring the vast number of other, much more likely, possible explanations.

> We used to have issues with fairies, now it's humanoids visiting in crafts.

I wish I could find it, but many years ago I read a great paper on this. The thesis was that when people see things they can't explain, they will interpret what they see in the context of their society. Technologically-oriented societies produce explanations of a technological nature. Mystically-oriented societies will produce explanations of a mystical nature, and so on.

As I said in another comment, people tend to see what they expect to see rather than what is actually there.

[zeroc8]

But the fact remains that people are seeing things or lights buzzing around the sky in a manner we cannot explain.